


Revere thy Roof, and to thy Guests be Kind

by CynaraM



Series: Friendship is Unnecessary [1]
Category: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Genre: Canon-Era, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Light Angst, Mostly Gen, platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 20:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2242332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynaraM/pseuds/CynaraM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cabal takes shelter under the Barrows' roof, but, as always, he brings danger with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which an uninvited guest arrives and hospitality is accepted

A man walked stiffly along a residential street in a small English town. The street could hardly have been more English or more residential; it was saturated with an English residentiality that made the man's teeth hurt, over and above his other aches. He paused at the white gate outside his destination and breathed deeply, resettling his coat against his shoulders. A wet bramble rose brushed his cheek, and he swiped it away irritably. His cuffs and collar gleamed against the gloaming.

Indoors, Leonie Barrow stood over a utility sink scrubbing a bucket-full of paintbrushes with turpentine. Her head was wrapped in a faded scarf, and she was wearing her father's old trousers. She had smudged cream-coloured paint onto her forehead ten minutes ago and hadn't realized it yet. Looking up from her brushes, she frowned; was that a knock?

At the door she glanced through one of its side lights. Once upon a time her father had had to remind her to do that; now she believed in monsters. Dusk was falling, but through the narrow window the hallway light picked out a gleam of silver-headed cane, a tightly knotted cravat, and a cold blue-grey eye staring back at her. "Miss Barrow. May I come in?"

It was absurd, the grip a polite upbringing could have. Johannes Cabal was the worst monster Leonie knew, but it was an effort to stay and regard him coldly from the window. An inward voice insisted, insanely, that it was rude to keep deranged necromancers standing on the mat as if they weren't welcome. The traditions of Barrow hospitality insisted Cabal be invited in and offered sherry. A fainter, madder voice sang that rudeness wasn't very ladylike, either, dear. Leonie tightened her jaw and endured. "Why?"

"I would rather discuss it inside." The pause stretched out until it was uncomfortable. "I give you my word that I will offer you no harm while I am your guest." 

The chorus sensed a weakness and doubled the ferocity of its litany. See how polite the killer was being? How ungracious she was, to doubt his word. He would think she didn't trust him, next. And, whispered her fears, would a door stop him? "Miss Barrow. You will recall that I did you no harm -" and a pause, barely perceptible, "in April."

She sighed. He wasn't wrong. But what did he want from her now? She unlocked the door and flung it open with a flourish. "Why, Mr. Cabal, whatever will you think of my manners. Will you have some sherry?” 

***

She had taken his hat and unexpectedly heavy stick and ushered him to the chesterfield in the parlour. A tiny crystal glass of sherry sat on the doily-topped table by his elbow, where he had set it aside after a sip. "Excuse my trousers" she said, making small talk. The longer she kept Cabal from his point the more uncomfortable he seemed to become, and she had resolved to have what fun she could. "I painted the skirting boards this afternoon, and I was cleaning up when you arrived."

"I require your assistance, Miss Barrow."

"The weather really is terrible for painting; who knows when it will dry. Did you have wet weather on your way here?"

"It is a matter of some urgency."

"Still, it is good for the flowers. Did you notice our bramble roses? They're flourishing this year."

"Miss Barrow, I am afraid I must impose upon you for the night. I require the protection of your threshold." Leonie was surprised out of her game and stared at Cabal. "Your threshold," he repeated. "You are familiar with the concept?"

"The door. The entrance to a building or house."

"Magically speaking, the entrance to a home," he said. "There is related folklore. Are you familiar with it?"

“Do vampires have to be invited in? Is that the story?"

"Hm. I couldn't say. But that is the general idea. Some creatures are profoundly affected, and a group of them is currently in pursuit of me."

"And you led them to my house?"

"You will be at practically no risk."

"Excuse me if I'm sceptical. Why not use your own home?"

"I am not certain... What makes a house a home, Miss Barrow?" The demand reminded her of her most imposing lecturer at school. Cabal was lacking only four more decades and eyebrows of nearly prehensile splendor. 

"Family. Hospitality. L...love. I see." That had not come out quite right, but it was said.

He curled a lip at her, but did not dispute her conclusion. His forehead glistened with perspiration. "I am not certain my own threshold is strong enough to withstand this assault. Yours and your father's should be more than sufficient. Where is he?"

"On a fishing trip with friends." And she wondered if she should have lied. Cabal seemed not to have heard. He had gone corpse-pale, and stood carefully.

"Excuse me." Taking his Gladstone bag, he walked up the stairs. She followed him - god only knew what Cabal planned to do up there - and was nonplussed when she arrived to find the door to the bathing room closing. Surely he wasn't planning to have a soak now? 

"I'm not sure how you mistook that for the end of the conversation, Cabal. What is following you, and what kind of danger you are bringing here?"

A minute passed, and she heard nothing. She was turning to leave when she heard a clatter of metal and a stifled cry of pain. 

"Cabal, are you well?"

"Very well, Miss Barrow." There as a strained quality to his voice. Silence.

"Mr. Cabal. If you are unwell, I hope you will let me assist you." A long pause, very long, and then the click of the bolt being turned back. Leonie took it as capitulation, and opened the door.

It opened on a row of familiar hooks, neatly hung with a suit jacket, shirt, undershirt, and cravat. Opening the door wider, she saw the necromancer on the edge of the bathtub, his head sunk between his knees. His back was a field of angry inflammations where black slivers were driven far into the flesh. "Dear God."


	2. In which aid is rendered and a reunion, of sorts, occurs

"Spare me the theological commentary, Miss Barrow." A pair of forceps lay on the tile between his feet. He raised his head, and its hectic flush made his features unfamiliar. 

“What can I do?” Her eyes were wide, but her voice was matter-of-fact. She was already reaching for hydrogen peroxide and the needle she used for extracting splinters.

“Remove them. Without killing me, if it’s at all convenient.”

“Killing you?"

"I had thought I could extract them myself, but when mishandled they fracture and deliver a venom contained within. I believe they also dissolve.” Cabal looked sick, but he sounded impatient with the injury.

So much for throwing him out on his ear. "We should do this in my father's room. It has the best light. Can you walk?" He shot her a withering look, rose carefully, and stalked from the room, radiating irritability. She ought to have known he'd be a terrible patient. She readied herself to catch him, though how she'd do it without hitting a half-dozen of the darts she had no idea. 

Installed sitting backwards on the straight chair in her father's room, he looked absurdly out of place. The room held her father's well-worn furniture, a picture of Leonie's mother, and the scent of pipe tobacco. Frank Barrow's long good life seemed to breathe from his possessions, and Cabal's chilly aura was diminished by it. And how did he always smell of formaldehyde? Did he bathe in it? Sprinkle it on his handkerchiefs? Dab it behind his ears? He must have come directly from his lab, or somewhere he was working, i.e. violating the laws of man and God.

Leonie lit several candles and the large oil lamp on her father's dresser, turning it up to increase the flame. She retrieved the roll of medical instruments from the bathing room and offered Cabal water, which he accepted, and an aspirin, which he did not. "My liver may already be working at capacity."

"Any instructions?"

"Treat the slivers like glass. Perpendicular pressure or the slightest torsion could break them." He had collected his wits again and held himself upright, hands loosely clasped on the chair back, pretending to ignore his state of undress.

"How should I treat you if the dose becomes dangerous,” she asked as she sterilized the instruments in the flame.

He gave her a ghost of a sneer. "It may already be so, Miss Barrow. I have no idea. Treat the symptoms and hope for the best. Don't let anyone into the house until dawn. I have a gun..." He hesitated, perhaps remembering that she had seen that gun from the wrong side not very long ago "...in my bag. Does the policeman's daughter know how to shoot?"

"You're wasting time teasing me, Cabal. Let's get started." She picked up the forceps, knelt behind him, and started to work. 

It was fairly awful. She had expected instructions and corrections and imprecations, but he didn’t say anything; just stared ahead blankly, or at the family photograph framed on the wall. The slivers were sunk into the flesh; pressing and digging were required to expose the ends, which were slippery and damnably fragile. She broke the first. "Damn! I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Are you all right?" He was silent, but his hands clenched hard on the chair back and she had to pause until the shudders stopped. She would have preferred yells and insults. 

“So when you said ‘very little risk,’ you meant…?”

“That my pursuers will likely not locate me here; if they do, they will be kept outside by your threshold; and, finally, that they will almost certainly get bored and wander off in short order.”

“And they are?”

“Fairies.”

“Fairies” she repeated, as neutrally as she could. His only reply was a grim silence. She would not stoop to jokes about trumpets and bluebell hats while their quills were in Cabal’s skin in front of her, but it was not the reply she had expected. 

She grew absorbed in her task, digging into the inflamed skin with the forceps, trying to force a dart to the surface. She broke another. Cabal took longer to stop shuddering. The room shrank to Cabal’s back and the ends of the forceps and probe as she pinched and stretched and pried before grasping the quill with the forceps or her fingernails and pulling it out with the utmost care. He was slim, but the underlying structure was stronger than she had expected. It was somehow unexpected to learn that Johannes Cabal possessed a human body. An elegant one, even. Ridiculous.

"You know, a layer of academic flab might have been some protection." She returned to her work.

"Hm."

"Your girlish figure. Is it all the running from outraged mobs?"

"Girlish...? Ah. Bicycling to the train station, mostly," he said, with the hint of a gasp as she slid a dart cleanly out.

“You bicycle?” He seemed to hear the smile in her voice. She tried to picture Cabal on a bicycle. With a basket? 

“It’s a perfectly sensible way to get around.” 

“Of course. Do you have any other outdoor activities? Golf? Hillwalking?"

“No. Hillwalking is ridiculous, not to mention appallingly boring. I have no desire to dress up as if I’m attempting Kilimanjaro to crest some molehill only the English would consider an accomplishment.”

“You don’t consider yourself English?” She furrowed her brow as she started digging for another dart. 

He snorted, his head now bowed and resting against the back of the chair. “I suppose I...” He was interrupted by a voice coming from the garden. Cabal drew himself upright abruptly at the sound. Leonie dropped her instruments and rose. 

“The fae are miffed with your guest, Leonie.” It was an amused baritone voice. When Leonie reached the window she saw a man standing among her father’s briar roses. The window was open to the night air, and the summer moon and the lamp from the living room shone on his impeccable jacket and light-tawny tumbled locks. He had broad shoulders and a flexible, amiable face. In other circumstances, Leonie would have thought him attractive.

Cabal’s reaction was different. His stiffened muscles had taken a second to respond, but when he reached the open window a moment behind Leonie, he went entirely still. 

“And I have to say, they have some justice on their side!” the man continued. "Really, Johannes, did you expect there to be no retribution?” Cabal still said nothing. “Do you like the form?” The man executed a graceful turn on the lawn. “Very handsome, isn’t it?”

“The powers of Hell can’t resist a bit of amateur psychology, can they,” said Cabal drily. “Am I supposed to throw myself at your feet weeping?” 

At this extraordinary statement Leonie looked at Cabal in alarm, and then back at the man. There was something…. Something in the jaw, the eyebrows? A faint over-articulation in the “v” of “very,” where Cabal’s more distinct accent could be heard, too. Leonie felt a chill. “What are you doing on my lawn, sir?”

He bowed and was instantly all contrition. “My regrets, Leonie, at trespassing. I am not an invited guest like Johannes, am I.” He grinned broadly at Cabal. “We have both imposed upon you, I am afraid. You are safe from the fae behind your threshold, certainly. But is your father at home? And while your home is safe from the fae, it is not as safe from men - or from Below."

Leonie did not look at Cabal in accusation. The thing on the lawn was not a man, and if Cabal said it was from Hell, it likely was. She would not give it the satisfaction of seeing its threats find their mark. That did not mean it was lying. 

Cabal tried to take control of the situation, carefully not looking at Leonie. “What is Hell’s interest in this? You’re not generally disposed to champion the fae. Wing envy, possibly.”

“We take an interest in you, Johannes, always. How is the state of your soul, brother?” The man laughed wildly, as at an excellent joke. "I’m just here to tell you that you’ve won, Johannes. You wriggled your way into a safe haven, and the Fae will no doubt wander off after a butterfly or similar. Congratulations! You know we don’t want you dead, after all. Or you, Leonie, at least not now."

“That’s not a physical body,” murmured Cabal. “He can’t do anything. He’s here to...." Cabal trailed off. Leonie knew how cryptic Caval could be, but suspected that he didn't have the faintest idea what this was about, either.

On the lawn, the man tried out a few dance steps. “We got a taste of your soul, Leonie, not that long ago. It was… mmm, lovely, but I wouldn’t trouble myself with you now. In twenty or thirty years - well, our best ally is time. The low-hanging fruit, however….” and he looked at Cabal over his shoulder. “You could remove your protection from him.”

Cabal shifted his weight and braced the Webley on the sill. And where had that come from? “She can’t,” he said flatly. “I would have to offer her harm or otherwise transgress my duties as guest. She could try to eject me physically, I suppose.”

“You’re so literal, brüderlein. And you think you know everything. The Fae wouldn’t think of suggesting it themselves; they’re traditionalists, Leonie, and won’t even bear you a grudge, but I - I would give it a try, you know. He hasn’t beaten you or shot you or, you know, forced to you sign over your soul - today - but I imagine he lied, or at least hid things from you. Do you know why the fae want him? And would he leave if you asked him?'

"Not that you would ask him. You’re a traditionalist, too. And not that I would tell the fae soldiers, while their attention is still on you, that your father is fishing in Scotland; but I could. And if I cared to put in a little work, I could find a human to pay you a call."

"You don't know the neighborhood very well, do you," muttered Cabal.

"....This is the danger Cabal has exposed you to.”

Leonie stared at the handsome face and wondered whose it was; Cabal had not looked away once. “Leave, sir.” 

“Farewell, sweet Leonie. And be more careful."

Cabal stood by the window with the Webley after the man had flicked out of view on the lawn. 

“Will the fae wait to ambush you?”

“No. As he suggested, they don’t wait well. Chasing, hunting, stabbing, et cetera, but not waiting. They’ll come after me later, and I’ll be ready. Far from here, in case you were wondering.”

“Let’s get the last three darts out of you.”

“Yes” said Cabal. “Yes. Ssss.” Conveniently, he fell on his side rather than his back, and partially on the bed.

Leonie moved the lamp and surveyed the darts. Two were in fragments, either from fracturing or dissolution. She set at the last one with a scalpel while she thought.

The fever set in soon afterwards, before he regained consciousness. After she cleaned and bandaged the wounds, she arranged him in her father’s bed (and isn’t that a part she’d leave out of the story. If she told the story) and used cold, wet towels to keep the fever from cooking that admirable brain. She sat through the night with the lamp turned low, changing towels and listening to his disjointed murmurs. They were mostly in German, and too low for her to make out a word.


	3. In which the devil wins

He awoke mid-morning. Leonie brought him tea and broth and books and otherwise left him to his own devices. He was weak, and she insisted he remain another night. To his own surprise, he agreed. From the sounds, he thought she might be painting the skirting-boards again. She brought him a tray later and he said, abruptly: “I didn’t expect infernal involvement.” She nodded and left with his teacup. 

Cabal drifted and dreamed. He did not sleep deeply - he rarely slept deeply - but he slept with an unusual sense of peace, and for once he dreamed. He was small, and he had influenza. His mother had sat in his dim room for two days and a night, reading to him and bringing him milky tea. He had sweated and retched and ached and she had brought cool cloths and sat beside his bed. He had never been so happy. 

Later, he heard voices from downstairs, and Leonie’s voice: “sorry about the noise last night; some silly young man who had the wrong house…. No, he wandered off again when he understood.... I have dad’s shotgun handy, but it hardly seemed like the time or place.... Of course I’d call, thank you Mr. Wilton."

***

On the second morning, he rose and dressed. Leonie was in the kitchen, and gave him a long look as he was framed in the door - surveying his black suit and the Gladstone bag by the stairs. “Are you well enough to leave?”

“Yes, truly.” He searched for the next politeness. “Thank you. You have been very kind.”

He was missing his pocket square; he must have left his home in a hurry. Damn him, for standing in her kitchen door and looking lost. Damn him for being polite, as if he had known and decided to make it harder. Damn him for looking paler than usual. Double-damn him for being beyond help. “You don’t sound well. What now? Sit down and have some tea."

Cabal poured himself a cup. Assam, he noted with surprise and pleasure. And lemon. “The demon was accurate when he said the Fae will not harm you. You should be safe. Or, at least, as safe as you were before.”

She didn't sit down herself, but continued to make breakfast in a scattered way, losing the butter and forgetting to add things to the omelettes. Cabal realized he was making her uncomfortable and felt oddly uncertain, sitting in the Barrow kitchen with his tea. 

“I meant to ask what you will do next" she said.

He collected himself. “I will continue my work, Miss Barrow. The specifics don’t concern you, nor would you like them.” He said it without apology and without resentment. 

“No. I suppose not.” She turned towards him, abandoning the eggs. She looked unhappy. “Listen. I am grateful that you rescued me in April. And I think that debt is paid.” She drew a breath and looked directly at him. “You are dangerous and careless, and I don’t want you around my family and my friends. If I see you again I will turn you in to the police.’ She leaned forward, trying to make him see, pity in her eyes. "You’ll never find it, Cabal. And you’ll destroy lives trying, including your own. It’s a waste.” 

Cabal’s face had held a trace of uncertainty when she started. Something had fallen away behind it as she spoke, and a glare lit his eyes from within. When he replied his voice was as cold as winter rain. "You are ignorant. And you would keep everyone else ignorant, too. Good-bye, Miss Barrow.” He did not look at her as he walked away. 

Leonie heard the door bang and sat down at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. She didn’t know what else she could do. What if he thought he could turn up again? Hospitality was all well and good, but Cabal brought deadly dangers with him. Didn’t she owe something to her father and her neighbours? How could he be in any way her responsibility, whose soul he had extorted at gunpoint?

But no-one was as far beyond redemption as the man who was entirely isolated. Shouldn’t even a necromancer have one hearth he could join? She stood, feeling older than she should, and turned to the mess she’d made of breakfast. Then she would go upstairs, strip her father’s bed, and do away with the rest of the evidence before he returned, covered with fish scales and smiling.


End file.
